Haunting images of the streets that were once home to Melbourne’s slums

August 11, 20145:06pm

1936: In this sparse North Melbourne living room, a baby cart was stored in the fireplace to conserve space. This room was used as both a living room and bedroom. A small child plays on the bare floors. Picture: Herald Sun Image Library

LOOK at much of inner Melbourne today and what do you see? Lots of expensive houses, trendy cafes and shiny offices.

But it was a different story decades ago when large swathes of suburbs such as Fitzroy, Collingwood, Richmond, Carlton and South Melbourne were decrepit and destitute.

May 1936: This Collingwood house with a corrugated iron 'bathroom' and external tap as the only water supply, was rented out for around $1.25 per week.Source:Herald Sun

These were Melbourne’s slums and they were well documented through newspaper photos of rundown houses and impoverished families.

June 1936: This house in Richmond was condemned. It was occupied by a family of eight. The bricks below the window were falling out, leaving a big hole into the kitchen. The house was damp and cold. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Supplied

One picture shows a family of eight sitting down to dinner. Old newspapers serve as the tablecloth and the only food seems to be a pile of sliced bread and a solitary chop on a plate.

May 1936: Wash day for Richmond mother of seven. Conditions such as these were common in the Richmond area. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

Three scruffy-looking girls clutching dolls blackened by dirt and dust feature in another photo.

February 1938: During the Depression, shanty houses and makeshift accommodation sprung up on part of the Dudley Flats wasteland south on Footscray Rd. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

And then we have images of shacks lining a riverbank strewn with rocks and industrial debris. This is Dudley Flats — a long forgotten part of the city that is now better known as the Waterfront City and New Quay precinct of Docklands.

Calls for the city’s slums to be cleared started in the late 1880s, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that the movement really gained momentum after a campaign led by Methodist layman Oswald Barnett.

April 1946: Children play in a street within an area marked for demolition and reconstruction. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

Following a damning report by the Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board, the Housing Commission of Victoria was established in 1938 to deal with the issue.

May 1954: Children play in the dirt in Camp Pell in Royal Park, a former military camp that provided emergency accommodation to those evicted from slums by the Housing Commission. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

“It was all very moralistically put by the authorities, they said the terrible conditions led to poverty and crime and depravity.

“But a lot of the people were poor because they were unemployed or unemployable, because they were invalids or widows, had too many children or were alcoholics or just in bad family situations where there wasn’t enough support and not much income.”

Writing in The Encyclopedia of Melbourne Online, Alan Mayne argues that slums were shrouded in myths and the exaggerated stereotypes were entertaining.

“Respectable households enjoyed reading about the surreal environments and immoral behaviour precisely because the descriptions were so foreign to their own lives,” he says.

“Slums were an expected and titillating part of the imaginary landscape of bustling cities.”

July 1969: A family sits down to a sparse meal — one chop and a few slices of bread. The Salvation Army helped to feed them. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

Nevertheless, slum clearance and relocation of families really took off after the war.

By the end of the 1940s, the Housing Commission was mass producing homes from pre-cast concrete sections made at its Holmesglen factory.

It built the 1956 Olympic Village in Heidelberg West, which reverted to public housing when the Games were over.

July 1964: These are the kinds of houses that the large housing commission flats in Carlton replaced. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

In the 1960s, the commission started constructing multi-storey towers in suburbs like Carlton, Collingwood and Fitzroy amid concern over declining population in the inner city.

“High-rise towers soon ringed the inner city, changing the nature of Melbourne’s traditional low-rise urban form and drawing angry resistance from displaced residents and the new gentrifiers, young middle-class families moving into the inner city and restoring terrace houses,” Mr Mayne says.

Protests by a coalition of diverse groups led to the high-rise policy being abandoned by the state government in the early 1970s.

April 1977: Elizabeth Thompson with her two children, Paul and Jane, who lived in the Thompson St, Kensington, described by the Tenants' Union as one of the worst houses they’d ever seen. Picture: Herald sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

July 1970: An inner city back street that was home to many of Melbourne's poor. The original caption written for this photograph defined the poor as widows, the unemployed, unmarried mothers and the derelict. Picture: Herald Sun Image LibrarySource:Herald Sun

Many houses that were set to be demolished were saved, such as a whole block north of the Exhibition Buildings bounded by Carlton and Elgin streets.

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